Muhammad Ali twice beat Henry Cooper but was famously knocked down by Brit

Ali, who bragged he could ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’, was the master of self-publicity.

It is said that in his lifetime, more was written about Ali than any other living person, including Presidents and Royalty and certainly any other sports star.

Ali crowned four years as an amateur — when he won 100 bouts and lost just five — by winning Olympic gold in Rome in 1960.

He later claimed he threw the medal into the Ohio River in protest at the treatment of blacks and was given a replacement medal at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, where he lit the torch.

From the moment he won his gold medal in 1960, Ali made headlines around the globe with every move he made.

For three years after his professional debut in October 1960, Ali – still known then as Cassius Clay — amassed a record 19 consecutive wins at heavyweight, 15 of them by knockout, including Britain’s Henry Cooper.

Muhammad Ali is pictured cuddling his two daughters Laila and Hana in 1978

Publicity-hungry Clay was so controversial that 2,000 people turned up at the London Palladium to watch the weigh-in with former plasterer, Henry Cooper.

The Cooper fight at Wembley Pool in April 1963 — one of Clay’s toughest ever bouts — was stopped in the fifth round due to deep cuts in Cooper's eyes, though the Londoner actually managed to knock Ali down earlier.

After the bout in London, the boxing authorities virtually begged Clay to fight Charles Sonny Liston for the world heavyweight title.

Despite Clay’s unbeaten record, he was not expected to win against the reigning champ.

During the weigh-in on the day before the bout, the ever-boastful Clay, who frequently taunted Liston during the build-up by dubbing him "the big ugly bear" and declared he would "float like a butterfly and sting like a bee."

Related Articles

knockout photos

The life and times of boxing legend Muhammad Ali in pictures

Best of Ali

‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee': SunSport looks back at Muhammad Ali’s greatest quotes

Kid Gloves

How Muhammad Ali's youngest daughter Laila carried on her father’s legend like 'the son he never had'

FURY FUELS TYSON

Tyson Fury claims he is the most controversial heavyweight world champion since Muhammad Ali

At the pre-fight weigh-in, Clay's pulse rate was around 120, more than double normal. Liston misread this as fear and expected to win in two rounds.

Clay and Liston fought for six rounds but when Liston refused to answer the bell for the seventh, Clay, then aged 22, became the youngest boxer to take a title from a reigning heavyweight.

Muhammad Ali won the heavyweight title with his victory over Sonny Liston

The rematch a year later lasted just one minute. For most of that time, Ali — as the world had come to know him — danced, and hardly threw a punch.

Suddenly, Liston launched a left-hander. He lurched towards Ali, who rode the blow and knocked Liston out with a right-hand punch to the cheekbone, so fast and so powerful it snapped the challenger’s head back and catapulted him onto the canvas.

A month after the fight, Ali divorced his first wife Sonji, citing her failure to follow the laws of Islam, including refusing to wear Muslim dress.

In 1966, the fighter, by then known around the world as Muhammad Ali, was drafted to serve in the US Army during the Vietnam War.

Quizzed by reporters, he famously answered: “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong.” He was jailed for five years and fined the maximum ten thousand dollars for refusing the draft.

Muhammad Ali with his second wife Belinda and their four children in 1973

Ali did not fight again for three and a half years, the prime of his boxing life lost. It was 1974 before he regained the world heavyweight title, knocking out George Foreman in the famous Rumble in the Jungle in Kinshasa, Zaire.

The following year, after beating Britain’s Joe Bugner in Malaysia, Ali flew to the Philippines where he beat Joe Frazier on a technical knockout after 14 rounds of the fight of the century that will forever be known as The Thrilla in Manila.

Ali suffered a severe pounding – especially to his head - in his epic fright with Frazier and many believe he should have quit the ring there and then.

He lost his title again briefly to Leon Spinks in 1978 and then won it back the same year to become the only boxer to be crowned World Heavyweight champion three times.

He fought twice more and lost. Ali retired in 1981 after losing to Trevor Berbick after ten rounds in Nassau in the Bahamas.

Soon after quitting the ring, Ali began showing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease but the condition was not diagnosed until 1884.

Muhammad Ali was voted BBC Sporting Personality of the Century in 1999

But by the time he attended President Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, Ali’s condition had deteriorated and he was unable to speak.

By that stage he had developed tremors, his speech was slurred, and his body movements had become slow.

Doctors prescribed drugs which alleviated the worst of his symptoms, which it is believed may have been caused by blows to the head during his long career in the ring.

He said: “This diagnosis was difficult to accept. At first there were times when I could push all thoughts of the disease out of my mind, Later when the physical symptoms could not be ignored, there were periods of frustration and depression which I had to fight as vigorously as any proponent I ever faced in the ring.

“I think maybe my Parkinson’s is God’s way of reminding me what is important. It slowed me down and caused me to listen rather than talk. Actually people pay more attention to me now because I don’t talk so much.”

“They’ll have to say I was the fastest heavyweight that ever lived. They’ll have to say that I was the best looking - my face was unscratched and unmarked.

“They’ll have to say I was the most entertaining and the most clever. They’ll say that even without a college education, I was smart enough to lecture at colleges and debate the best minds on television.